Related papers: Astro2020 Project White Paper: The Cosmic Accelero…
We present an overview of future observational facilities that will significantly enhance our understanding of the fundamental nature of dark matter. These facilities span a range of observational techniques including optical/near-infrared…
We used the 0.5-m robotic telescopes located at the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences for monitoring two square degrees of the sky with the aim of detecting new exoplanets. A dimming of the visible…
New insights on stellar evolution and stellar interiors physics are being made possible by asteroseismology. Throughout the course of the Kepler mission, asteroseismology has also played an important role in the characterization of…
High precision spectrographs can enable not only the discovery of exoplanets, but can also provide a fundamental measurement in Galactic dynamics. Over about ten year baselines, the expected change in the line-of-sight velocity due to the…
The XO project's first objective is to find hot Jupiters transiting bright stars, i.e. V < 12, by precision differential photometry. Two XO cameras have been operating since September 2003 on the 10,000-foot Haleakala summit on Maui. Each…
The Star Watch extreme-precision astrometry mission (0.1 - 1.0 uas) builds on technology developed, and validated, during the SIM (Space Interferometry Mission) project. The sole science instrument is an optical interferometer with 50-cm…
Cosmic Explorer (CE) is a next-generation ground-based gravitational-wave observatory that is being designed in the 2020s and is envisioned to begin operations in the 2030s together with the Einstein Telescope in Europe. The CE concept…
We describe three useful applications of asteroseismology in the context of exoplanet science: (1) the detailed characterisation of exoplanet host stars; (2) the measurement of stellar inclinations; and (3) the determination of orbital…
The discovery of cosmic acceleration has inspired ambitious experimental and observational efforts to understand its origin. Many of these take the form of large astronomical surveys, sometimes using new, special-purpose instrumentation,…
A new generation of powerful dark energy experiments will open new vistas for cosmology in the next decade. However, these projects cannot reach their utmost potential without data from other telescopes. This white paper focuses in…
Observations of the Cosmic Microwave background have provided many of the most powerful constraints we have on cosmology and events in the early universe. The spectrum and isotropy of CBR have long been a pillar of Big Bang models. The…
Spectra of composite systems (e.g., spectroscopic binaries) contain spatial information that can be retrieved by measuring the radial velocities (i.e., Doppler shifts) of the components in four observations with the slit rotated by 90…
Future strategic X-ray satellite telescopes, such as the probe-class Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite (AXIS), will require excellent soft energy response in their imaging detectors to enable maximum discovery potential. In order to…
According to the cosmological principle, the Universe should appear isotropic, without any preferred directions, to an observer whom we may consider to be fixed in the co-moving co-ordinate system of the expanding Universe. Such an observer…
Astrometric measurements of stellar systems are becoming significantly more precise and common, with many ground and space-based instruments and missions approaching 1 microarcsecond precision. We examine the multi-wavelength astrometric…
Aims. We present a solution to improve the performance of coronagraphs for the detection of exo-planets. Methods. We simulate numerically several kinds of coronagraphic systems, with the aim of evaluating the gain obtained with an adaptive…
I discuss the scientific rationale and opportunities in the study of high energy particle accelerators away from the Earth; mostly, those outside the Solar System. I also briefly outline the features to be desired in telescopes used to…
Cosmology with large interferometric telescopes is a rich and largely unexplored subject, involving three types of measurement: astrometric measurement of absolute distances and proper motions, dispersions of relative proper motions, and…
Future missions like Roman, HabEx, and LUVOIR will directly image exoplanets in reflected light. While current near infrared direct imaging searches are only sensitive to young, self-luminous planets whose brightness is independent of their…
The All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) is monitoring all sky to about 14 mag with a cadence of about 1 day; it has discovered about 10^5 variable stars, most of them new. The instrument used for the survey had aperture of 7 cm. A search for…